During what would prove Nina’s only visit to New York and the Simon & Schuster offices, she was celebrated by her team at S&S before she’d even completed the work. Marysue had laid the groundwork, but a whole mess of Simon & Schuster folks followed suit, including: Carolyn Reidy, Jonathan Karp, Richard Rhorer, Cary Goldstein, Sarah Reidy, Dana Trocker, Ebony LaDelle, Martha Schwartz, Carly Loman, Jackie Seow, Thomas Colligan, and Lisa Rivlin. Special thanks to Zack Knoll at S&S and Dana Murphy at The Book Group for their wonderful work behind the scenes.
Nina wanted to thank Samantha Hahn for the fantastic cover art, and Jenny Meyer, who handled Nina’s foreign rights. She was also incredibly grateful to all her foreign publishers, especially Australian publisher Michael Heyward and his lovely colleagues at Text, whose encouragement and feedback were much appreciated during the writing process. Also Michelle Weiner at CAA.
Thanks to Dan Jones at the New York Times’ Modern Love column for publishing her piece, “When a Couch Is More than a Couch,” a dream publication for Nina and one that led directly to this book. Nina also wanted to thank Drew Perry, whose insightful edits were almost all incorporated into the book; Tita Ramirez; Melissa and Adam Tarleton; Heidi Levine; Amanda Moore, who read drafts of what would become The Bright Hour; and Cristina Henriquez, who advised Nina early on about how to develop a book project. Nina had the support of a very close circle throughout her life and her illness, including my sister Jennie Duberstein; Nina’s cousin Bonnie Dundee; her best friend since high school Eliza Harrington Myers; her brother, Charlie Riggs, and his wife, Amelia; and her father, Peter Riggs, the kindest, most supportive, and most quietly competent parent a girl could hope for and one of the best human beings I have ever met. Nina couldn’t share The Bright Hour with her mom, Jan Riggs, who passed away in August 2015. Nina’s resolve and clarity in the face of terminal disease is an implicit tribute to her mom, who was a source of much of Nina’s strength and clarity on mortality.
Nina was also enormously grateful to Dr. Cavanaugh and Dr. Rosenblum at the Duke Cancer Center. Wherever she went, it seemed, Nina was attended by badass professional women. Speaking of badass women, fathomless gratitude to Nina’s friend Virginia Darden Meeks, or just Ginny. Ginny was diagnosed about the same time as Nina with the same crappy triple negative breast cancer, and died three days before, as Nina lay in hospice. When I told Nina about Ginny’s death, it hit her harder than just about anything. Ginny was a fierce, hilarious, and lovely person. The kids Ginny left behind and the friendships she helped to create between our family and hers are gift enough, but knowing her also made Nina’s journey through the stygian realms of metastatic breast cancer a whole lot brighter.
Lastly, although we talked about The Bright Hour being Nina’s legacy to our kids, Freddy and Benny—and I hope it will through successive readings help them to know her and understand the love she had for them better as they get older—I’m sure Nina wanted to thank the two of them and me. We were a heck of a little unit and the work of her adult life was actually much more about sowing the seeds of future happiness for us than it was about writing. Happily, I think she managed to do both. No dedication can describe how much I love or miss her, but I am also really grateful for everything she did to prepare us for this tremendous loss and all she left behind, especially this chronicle and our two boys.
—JOHN DUBERSTEIN